1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a display apparatus. More particularly, the invention relates to a display panel driver, a method of driving a display panel using the display panel driver, and a display apparatus including the display panel driver.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a display apparatus includes a display panel and a display panel driver. The display panel includes a plurality of gate lines, a plurality of data lines and a plurality of pixels. The display panel driver includes a controller, a gate driver and a data driver.
Generally, the pixel includes a switching transistor, a driving transistor, a storage capacitor and an organic light emitting element.
In a digital driving method of the pixel, the driving transistor is operated as a switch not in a saturation region but in a linear region. Accordingly, the driving transistor represents a turn on status or a turn off status.
To turn on or turn off the driving transistor, data voltages having two levels, including a turn on level and a turn off level, are used. In the digital driving method, the pixel represents the turn on status or the off status so that a single frame may be divided into a plurality of subfields so as to represent various grayscales. The turn on status and the turn off status of the pixel during each of the subfields are combined so that the various grayscales of the pixel may be represented.
As a level of grayscales increases, the number of the subfields may increase. Accordingly, the amount of data programming for the pixel increases so that the data driver should be driven at a high speed and emitting time of the display panel may be decreased.